Residents Return to Town near Syria’s Raqqa after Expulsion of ISIS Militants

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Nov 17, 2016

Residents started returning to a town near Raqqa after Islamic State (ISIS / Daesh / ISIL / IS) militants were driven out of the area, video uploaded to the internet appeared to show.

Video posted online by SMART news agency on Wednesday (November 16) purported to show a convoy of trucks and cars carrying thousands of people as they drove towards the town of Al Hisha, north of Islamic State's de facto capital in Syria, after Syrian Democratic forces were said to have pushed out ISIS militants from the area.

"We left from Al Hisha. My name is Issa Saleh, we left our village, which is called Al Hisha, after it was hit. We left because of the shelling. The Syrian Democratic Forces helped us leave and took us to a refugee camp, where they hosted us for five days. They gave us food, somewhere to sleep. Now they are bringing us back to our village. God bless them," said a resident of Al Hisha, Issa Saleh, from his car on the way to Al Hisha.

"These are all residents of Al Hisha. They number more than 7 to 8,000 people. Now they are all returning to the village, which was cleared of all mines and everything else left behind by Daesh," said another resident, Jalal Hamoud, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a US-backed alliance of armed groups fighting against Islamic State, which last week began an offensive against territory held by the terrorist group north of Raqqa.

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